What I was able to accomplish while Chi was away on a brief holiday trip, and what happened when he returned.

Listen while you read to “T’z Blues” from TPO’s “10 Strings” album.

January 18, 2012

Referring to my previous post, this is what I was successful in accomplishing:

Demolish & Restore Cat Shit Corridor

Shop for required materialsclean/prime/paint/seal wallsbleach/strip/sand the floorvarnish/seal the floorreconfigure/put the space back together

shopping list:fuckload of low-grit belt sandpaper (36 & 50)oil-modified polyurethane (1 gallon)GOOD respirator w/charcoal cartridges (may be dealing w/asbestos)Klean-Strip ADHESIVE REMOVERcouple more paint panscheck supply of rollers – may need one morea bunch of clear plastic to mask off work area & contain the mess from the sanding dust (& potential asbestos) but still get the light from ofc

Operation manuals
Recipes
Contact info
Sheet music
put together at least one photo exhibit to dress up the wall in Cat Shit Corridor (if possible, one more for main bedroom)

Other:

Figure out live streaming/get it set up

Send 10 Strings off for review/radio play (dance thing & Brazilian radio stn)

Make a Panang curry paste
Juice/zest/freeze a fuckload of key limes, make a pie with the rest

If possible:

Finish kitchen curtains and make some for bathroom

Try to get these measured/spec’d out by Friday evening so I can get them to the cleaning shop to cut/hem on Saturday afternoon while bleach is drying

Re-do Chi’s room

***********************************

Unfortunately nothing south of the garden shopping list got done, even partially, so I’ve got my work cut out for me next time Chi makes himself scarce.

I was truly knackered from spending the entire three-day weekend working my ass off at the cat piss eradication effort and getting the front garden managed and planted for winter/spring plus whatever other stuff I managed to get done, and had a lousy headache and a respiratory reaction from breathing bleach fumes while demolishing the floor in Cat Shit Corridor, and adding insult to injury, the rag also descended on Wednesday (the day Chi was supposed to come home), so I stayed home from the day job to recover. It worked out well since I had really needed a full day/evening where I could be home and observe the cats as they got used to their new toilet arrangements that I wasn’t able to put together until the previous day by when the varnish on the floor had sufficiently dried; all the new smells, etc., and be able to deal with any issues that might arise before Chi came back with all his dysfunction and chaos. Fortunately none did, and the transition went splendidly. Hallelujah!! All of the cats readily used their new boxes with no confusion, although some of them still continued to also use the old ones, a couple of which I placed in different areas of the house.

The big Fail occurred that night when Chi came home from his trip (surprise!). We enjoyed a couple hours of civil interaction at first, but as soon as he switched from drinking white wine to the hard stuff (gin with a little soda water – he mixes it strong – more about this later) and went out to the living room to practice while I made dinner, the sounds emitting from the living room indicated that as his blood alcohol content increased, his behavior became increasingly aggressive and hostile. As has happened countless times before, just as I was approaching the final stages of getting dinner on the table, he came into the kitchen and did his aggression/ intimidation thing (which never works since I do not find the spectacle of a spoiled toddler throwing a drug-addled temper tantrum the least bit intimidating, but for what it’s worth, that means intruding into what I am doing, meddling, violating my personal space, verbally abusing/vituperating at me trying to provoke a fight, etc., i.e., generally making an intolerable nuisance of himself). “Great!”, I thought. “So this is the bloody thanks I get for knocking myself out to make a big dinner for him at his request since he got home earlier than expected, even though I am sick and exhausted and certainly wouldn’t have bothered with it if he were still gone!”

Needless to say, dinner was a miserably uncomfortable, stressful affair with him verbally abusing me the entire time (as usual under such circumstances), so as usual when this occurs, I finished eating as quickly as I could, washed the dishes, and retreated to my home office to get away from him and check Facebook and/or piddle about until I was ready to go to bed. It gets better. He eventually let himself into my office and continued vituperating at me, trying his best to provoke a fight. I really wish I’d heeded the little voice of my intuition and installed a sliding bolt lock on the second door to the office while he was gone. There are two points of entry, and only one is secured. Apparently he was desperate for a trauma-drama fix and energy/ “narcissistic supply” feed-up since he had been in a situation for five whole days where he had to keep his mental illness and drug addiction under wraps and give the impression of being a perfectly decent, normal person.

I tried playing possum and going in the adjacent bedroom, changing into my PJ’s, putting in my earplugs, turning out the lights and getting in bed, while telling him repeatedly to take his drug addiction and mental sickness elsewhere, but he persisted. I thought, “Fucking wonderful”. So this is the extra-special way he pays me back for spending the time that he was gone on his holiday trip slaving away correcting an intolerable household situation (i.e., the house stinking of cat piss and perpetuating Jaco’s inappropriate elimination issues)! The noise he was making indicated that he was displeased that I hadn’t instead spent the three-day holiday weekend practicing my instruments all day. In fact, he didn’t even know whether I had practiced or not. It was just standard-issue alcoholic/ narcissist behavior straight out of the DSM IV.

He sat down just inside the bedroom door and kept yammering on and on, and had apparently turned the volume all the way up on some video he had streaming on his computer in his room at the other end of the hall, preventing me from going to sleep (it was around 11:15 PM by that point), and said something to the effect that if I wouldn’t get out of bed and fight with him to the death (or some asinine bullshit like that!), then he would throw his drink in my face. He started walking around to where I was lying, and considering that I couldn’t see any way that having the bedding drenched in alcohol would produce any useful result, and God knows what else he was going to do, and I had exhausted my options for passively managing the situation by that point, I leaped out of bed and shoved him toward the door and out of my room, bashing the holy shit out of my left lower leg on the bed post in the process.

He must have dropped his drink, so he went back to the kitchen to get another one, which he came back into the room with and threw in my face, no doubt splattering it all over my clothing lining the wall beside where I was standing, not to mention my pyjamas, my hair, the carpet, the turtle’s house, etc., etc. It was gin, and burned the hell out of my eyes. Again, I shoved him out the door and slammed it shut. He came back in again and continued abusing and harassing me, so I got more physical in trying to drive the point home that his presence was not welcome, thinking, “Bleeding marvelous! Just what I need while I’m still sore from all the hard, physical work I did while he was gone, plus my headache: a god-damned fist fight!

After that hysterical ordeal, I was too agitated to get to sleep, and spent the night watching the clock change time. he kept on making noise until sometime after 2:30 a.m., and then it got quiet. At any rate, I got up a little too late to get a shower, so I had to go to work smelling like a cantina and with no sleep to speak of. I decided that the little bit of time I had available before I left would be best spent photographing my injuries and the scene of the incident, so I wasn’t able to do my morning practice either. Not the best way to start a day….

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4 Responses to “Successes and Failures”

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